J.I. Styles' skin shader

erik!

So, I downloaded that nice lookin' skin shader, but have no idea how to put it to use. Where exactly do I put all of the TGAs and such? Should it have come with a plugin or some sort of shader file cause it didn't. I got two notepad files and a few TGAs. Is that all I need? If so, what the heck do I do with them?

EDIT: ok wtf, dl'd it again and I got the .fx file this time! Nevermind mostly. You mods can close this thread now.

erik!

fuck, I really don't know what I'm doing. I can model, but I can't do materials for shit. Help??

Archanex

there are instructions included in the zip file on his website

J.I. Styles

hmm, well I may be qualified to help you

for starters, if you don't know how to apply an hlsl shader (real-time viewport shader) in max, best help I can direct you to is Ben Clowards tutorial on the subject:
http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_shaders1.shtml

after you've got it working in max, make sure you're viewing it through a perspective view or camera view (no user or iso views). The default settings aren't the best for every situation but give it a play... you'll notice some map slots support alpha channels, they're relevant passes it uses (eg, specular map alpha is specular gloss). If you get this far and have any questions, shoot them along in here and I'll help you out.

erik!

You know, I knew it had something to do with DirectX 9. Well, since my video card is damn near crap (GeforceFX 5200) and is a DirectX 8 card if I'm not mistaken, I'm not so sure I can use your nifty shader Mr. Styles. Now, if there's a way to get around the inadequacy of my card, then by all means please do tell. And BTW thanks for the efforts folks!

J.I. Styles

humm, well if I'm not mistaken, a fx5200 should be dx9 capable -- not sure on how many instructions it can take though. Try the shader on the 1 light setup, if it compiles and works then cool, otherwise it simply may not be able to. I know my code isn't exactly the prettiest in the world and the shader is an on-going work in progress, so it probably is pushing the instruction limit for that range of card.

Ben Cloward

Last I checked, the 5200 didn't do shader model 2.0 so you're probably out of luck in that regard. 5500 doesn't either. You could grab a card like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130059

It's under $100 and would get you off to the races with fancy shader support.

-Ben

EarthQuake

5200 does 2.0 iirc, i used to have one. It jsut does ot very poorly(slow as shit).

erik!

Ok, since I can't do it at home. Maybe I can do it at school. The school's machines have Nvidia QuadroFX 1100 cards. Can these use DirectX 9 shaders? When I try to select the DirectX 9 shader in the mat. editor, it's greyed out as "incompatible". Can my school's cards use DX9 shaders? If so, how can I enable them?

erik!

so after actually taking some time to look around Mr. Cloward's site a little more I discovered that I needed to set my Display Driver to my card. I feel like such a noob. Anyway, I can start messing with those shaders now woohoo! thanks for the feedback everyone